20th Anniversary International Conference of European SPES was organized by the Corvinus University of Budapest on June 20–22, 2024 in Budapest, Hungary.
Co-organizing partners of the conference were the Free University of Amsterdam–Faculty of Religion and Theology; Neyenrode Business University; the UNESCO Chair towards a Culture of Economic Peace, Grenoble School of Management; ABBS School of Management, Bangalore; S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai; and the Macau Ricci Institute, University of St. Joseph, Macau.
Corvinus University of Budapest
The 20th anniversary of European SPES is a good time to reflect on the prospects of spirituality in business and society as the new reality of Anthropocene emerged in the form of multiple crises. As consumption and human numbers have risen, humankind has ushered in a new era called the “Anthropocene” in which we are altering the biogeochemistry of the planet itself, destabilizing climate and influencing co-evolution at the planetary level. The Anthropocene is a regrettable exit from the placid past ten thousand years—the Holocene—a period of climate stability in which human civilization arose.
The dramatic symptoms of the Anthropocene—climate change, biodiversity loss, the collapse of the ecosystems, wellbeing deficiencies, raising global inequality, and migration—indicate that humanity may approach a point of no-return where the survival of our civilization is at stake.
While the Anthropocene is reshaping human consciousness and human-nature bonds, there is another big force that is racing to alter the human spirit and consciousness: Artificial Intelligence. Artificial neural networks are configured to identify correlated temporal patterns and attribute causality and agency, which can recognize themselves and other agents in a dynamic environment, in a way similar to biological consciousness in humans and animals.
What is the role of spirituality in such an unprecedented situation and what business and other social institutions can do to avoid further catastrophes? What should responsible professionals do? What is meaningful action today? How should we change our way of life? These and similar questions constituted the grand themes of the conference.